Amazing. How can one single band be the band from absolutely everyone’s youth?

Radiohead’s old music sounds a lot more modern and interesting than a lot of the drivel pumping out of Jo Whiley’s miserable bandwagon. Their run of good records is stretching their whole career, it looks like. They adapt what is going on in the fringes of music and bring it to the mainstream, as Bjork does. And Thom Yorke’s lyrics have just the right amount of ambiguity in them to stop them being preachy or pretentious (well maybe not). I cannot stand the fact that he spells his name ‘Thom’.

Anyhow, this was Radiohead in Victoria Park:

There was a great atmosphere at the gig. Open air events are often nicer than arenas because they are so much less claustrophobic, people are less worried about grabbing space because there is so much more of it, and you can always wander off and sit down on some grass if you fancy. Ironically, since the public venue smoking ban in England, it feels a lot smokier than indoor gigs.

Check out this girl who got chatting to us during the concert. She was really nice and friendly, as was her boyfriend, but she had the most outlandishly mannered facial expressions when speaking. It felt like I was on laudanum:

Her boyfriend looked like he knew why I was photographing her.

 He said he knew Ben’s doppelganger, who is a apparently a televisual sex-adviser/magician.

One of the best things about the location was the aeroplanes. There was a pretty constant flow of small, lower flying aeroplanes flying to London airport at bigger Heathrow-bound jumbos much higher up. They looked great banking in the sunlight, quietly swimming past each other. It seemed to go pretty well with the music.

Posted on June 26